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Enterprise Report Management and High-Speed Electronic Print Distribution

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In one way or another, documents drive most business processes. Whether they are printed on paper or presented electronically, distributed to suppliers and customers or used internally, documents are the end result of one procedural event and the potential beginning of another. Together with relational data, such as relational database management systems (RDBMS), documents comprise the bulk of business information in the enterprise.

As historical objects, documents are especially useful in capturing and preserving information that is not permanently maintained in a secure, readily accessible form in company databases. Modern document management and data mining systems exploit this wealth of information—invoices, purchase orders, statements, and a host of other business records—in ways not anticipated or provided for by enterprise application designers.

Leveraging Investments in Printing Infrastructure to Enable e-Business

This approach to document management is known as ‘Computer Output to Laser Disc' (COLD), or more appropriately, Enterprise Report Management (ERM). COLD/ERM is much more than simply storing and retrieving data. It involves connecting to a variety of data sources in the enterprise—mainframes, UNIX systems, TCP/IP hosts—and capturing documents for fast, centralized online access.

At its root, ERM leverages enterprise printing operations to enable and enhance e-business. COLD/ERM accepts printstreams and stores data on high-speed magnetic or optical media, making documents available ‘on demand' across multiple computer platforms, network protocols and data formats. What used to be distributed to production-class printers can now be sent to ERM systems, frequently eliminating the need for hardcopy. Industry research suggests that return on investment (ROI) of ERM implementation is typically attained in less than 12 months.

The Barr Solution for High-Speed Print Distribution

Barr Systems has been providing high-speed host connectivity and print management solutions to Fortune 1000 enterprises for more than 20 years. This puts Barr in a unique position—as a world-class print enabler—to serve as the perfect front end for ERM systems. With the Barr Enterprise Print Server acting as a document server, ERM can integrate diverse application data across the entire enterprise. Barr offers the most comprehensive line of host connectivity options in the industry, ensuring that the Print Server can pull down any documents and make them available to ERM.

Applications for Barr-enabled ERM systems include reporting and indexing features that provide long-term electronic customer service and bill presentment histories, document-level security, statistical analysis, Web access to legacy data, and many more e-business applications. These ‘middleware' solutions help to ensure that business data is efficiently stored, retrieved and analyzed so as to increase corporate productivity and cut costs.

Sample Configuration

Consider a utility company with corporate offices in Seattle and a data center in Los Angeles. Customer relations personnel need to be able to access historical customer statements, but company research shows it is not cost effective to ship copies of the statements from Los Angeles to company archives in Seattle, where space is limited. The solution involves configuring the Barr Enterprise Print Server to accept mainframe print jobs using Network Job Entry (NJE), a peer-to-peer relationship with the host that permits a great variety of job routing options. This allows administrators to control which statements are selected for further processing. To permit high-speed access to the local mainframe, the Barr Print Server/NJE host can be attached directly to the mainframe channel or to a channel-attached SNA gateway.

Alternative Print Server connection options include BARR/PRINT TCP/IP, which accepts jobs from TCP/IP-based hosts using Line Print Daemon (LPD), and BARR/PRINT CHANNEL, a relatively simple host connectivity solution for companies that do not require the powerful features of NJE.

Once downloaded, statements and other documents are delivered to the ERM software. ERM archives the documents on high-speed mass storage devices for secure, convenient online access for customer relations personnel. The Print Server also supports ERM by transforming incoming data into a variety of data formats on the front end, relieving ERM of this processing burden.

Conclusion

The Barr Enterprise Print Server works with a variety of options to provide companies with an ERM solution that maximizes investments in current technology and obviates the need for modification of host applications.

For more information call 1-800-BARR-SYS or e-mail info@barrsystems.com